After 5 nights in Sydney, we headed to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains for 3 nights. On arriving off the train, we were shocked at how cold it was compared to Sydney, just 2 hours journey away. We were staying about 1000m above sea level though. The difference was highlighted even more by the hail and snow that woke us up early on the next morning! In the Blue Mountains we had a great time. It was nice to be out of a city for the first time in ages, and we went o...

After 5 nights in Sydney, we headed to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains for 3 nights. On arriving off the train, we were shocked at how cold it was compared to Sydney, just 2 hours journey away. We were staying about 1000m above sea level though. The difference was highlighted even more by the hail and snow that woke us up early on the next morning! In the Blue Mountains we had a great time. It was nice to be out of a city for the first time in ages, and we went o...

After a long overnight flight from Beijing to Sydney, we arrived about lunchtime on 16th October, being as tired as we were we didn't do much, but as we'd arrived in Australia, and our hostel had one, we had a bbq on the roof of the hotel! The next day we went out exploring the city, and got our first look at the opera house and harbour bridge, and on Sunday we got a hop on-hop off tour bus around the city to see all the sights more easily. Our first stop was D...

During our last two days in Beijing we visited the temple of heaven park again very early in the morning to see people doing Tai Chi and their morning excercise which was great and quite amazing that they do this every morning. We also visited Longtan Park which was a locals park which had an outside gym and a climbing wall which Dan was very annoyed that he wasnt allowed to use. Lastly we went and visited Chairman Mao's pickled body which entailed a 45 minute qu...

The next day we went to the Summer palace which is the home of the Empress. Getting there was not quite as easy as first thought as the tube had not been completed to the summer palace, so we decided to walk but wernt quite sure which directing we were suppose to be going. Once we found it, we found that it was set around a huge lake and an island in it which was connected by a famous bridge. the whole area was spectacular. The best things we saw were the long c...